Tag Archives: united states history

Cultural Literacy: Steve Jobs

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Steve Jobs. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. It is the barest of introductions to the late tech entrepreneur. In fact, I would hazard a guess that students already know more about Mr. Jobs than this worksheet reports.

Nonetheless, I have tagged this document as high interest material? Why? Well, with two feature films about him, the first in 2013, and the second in 2015, written by the estimable Aaron Sorkin and based on the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, it is clear that in addition to his skills as a tech entrepreneur, Mr. Jobs has become a pop culture icon. I expect he will continue to be of interest for years to come.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Rotten Reviews: On Robert Frost

“If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes.”

James Dickey

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

Cultural Literacy: Revolutionary War

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American Revolutionary War. This is a one-worksheet with a six-sentence reading and seven comprehension questions. It is an adequate general introduction to the topic. In the United States, this period of our history is taught thoroughly, so I doubt this document would be of much use beyond, perhaps, an independent practice (i.e. homework) assignment to start a much broader unit on the American Revolution.

However, if you’re one of the growing number of international users of this blog, this document might have greater utility. This material isn’t part, frankly, of your mythology. All you need are the basic facts, which this short reading supplies.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Book of Answers: The Transcendentalists’ Resting Place

Where are Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne buried? In Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Massachusetts.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Cultural Literacy: Selective Service System

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the United States Selective Service System. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. If you teach high school. this might be a quick introduction to a civic obligation–right or wrong–that young people must heed in order to receive a number of other rights.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

H.L. Mencken on President Warren G. Harding

“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it.”

H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Cultural Literacy: Mercantilism

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on mercantilism. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and five comprehension questions. In general, upon review, this worksheet’s reading wants a bit for an explanation and analysis of the trade strategies mercantilist states use to keep their treasuries full. If you want to take your students on a deeper dive into this essential topic in the social studies (yeesh to that term incidentally) curriculum, this lesson plan on mercantilism might be more useful.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

The Algonquin Wits: Harold Ross on Henry Luce

“On hearing that Time editor Henry Luce objected to a profile of himself published in The New Yorker—on the grounds that not one nice thing was said about him in the whole piece—Ross told him, ‘That’s what you get for trying to be a baby tycoon.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

Saturday Night Live

If you or your students can use them, here is a reading on Saturday Night Live along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The show is soon to arrive, amazingly, at its fiftieth anniversary. As a friend of mine once put it, it gave us a reason to stay home on Saturday nights when we were young–which was probably a good thing in terms of our financial and physical (and perhaps moral) health. The reading, for all that, is relatively short.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

John J. Audubon

If you can use it, and I say that with the confidence of experience, because the study of John J. Audubon at the primary and secondary secondary levels of education isn’t much done, here is a reading on John J. Audubon along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As with most readings from the Intellectual Devotional series, this one-page text does an excellent job of encapsulating a complex life, particularly Audubon’s, uh, unorthodox working methods. What is doesn’t report, which I learned in the process of preparing this post, is that Audubon was a slaveholder.

So, what a bitter irony that he is buried in Harlem.

This post would not be complete without mentioning Audubon’s achievements, particularly his majestic and magisterial Birds of America, the double elephant folio he produced, and which is now a high spot in American antiquarian book collecting. Most copies–there are 120 known in all–of the book are in the possession of research libraries around the United States–the Beinecke Library at Yale keeps its copy (like its copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which came out of the Melk Abbey) out for display in its main gallery. When I followed various of the great research libraries on Twitter e.g. The Huntington Library, the Lilly Library, The Newberry Library, and, again, the Beinecke at Yale, a couple of them filmed and posted the turning of pages of Birds of America, a ritual worth watching.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.